


Grenzmauer 75

by jsaer



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Berlin Wall, Gen, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-05-17
Packaged: 2017-12-12 03:48:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jsaer/pseuds/jsaer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year is 1986, and there’s a ghost at the Wall in Berlin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grenzmauer 75

It was a quiet night; lazily falling snow muffled the world. The lights on the Wall and from the watchtower glinted off ice and metal. The room inside the watchtower was warmer than outside, but not enough for either of the two guards to remover their coats.

Jansen leaned more heavily against his fist, tapping his pencil against the table. He hated filling out forms, and was currently hoping if he glared hard enough the dammed thing would spontaneously combust. Three years of filling out the things and it hadn’t happened yet. He still tried. Hasek, the lucky bastard, was too new to have to do most of the paperwork. 

“Oi, Hasek. How much would I have to pay you in candy to do this paperwork for me?”

Silence. 

Jansen looked up. The other man was standing utterly still by the window. He set his pencil down, frowning. 

“It’s there again,” Hasek hissed, fingers tightening around the stock of his gun. Jansen’s chair clattered as he stood. Hasek twitched at the noise.

Jansen joined Hasek by the window, settling his own gun in the crook of his arm. He looked out, trying to spot what had Hasek so spooked.

Past barbed wire, mesh, beds of nails and silent dogs stood a white haired man, bare inches from the concrete barrier.

Oh. Him again.

Jansen had seen him often enough to know firing on him did no good. Bullets just passed through, like he was a-

Jansen shook himself, then reached over and poked Hasek in the side. 

"That’s not going to do anything,” he said, nodding to the gun in Hasek’s pale knuckled grip.

Hasek snorted, eyes still locked on the distant figure. “Makes me feel better.” 

“Mhm. You’ve heard the stories, right?”

Hasek shifted uneasily, “Yeah, I have.”

Jansen leaned against the wall, a wicked grin emerging. “Then you know they say he’s got eyes like the devil himself, red as fresh blood. And that his teeth are a wolf’s, and he’s got the tongue of a snake.” 

Hasek was getting steadily paler, eyes wider than attempting night vision could explain. 

_God, he’s young. And gullible._ Jansen thought, biting down a grin. He leaned closer, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, 

“There’s nothing under that oat but ice and bone, and decayed rodents eating themselves in his belly.” Hasek was leaning toward him now, eyes huge and still locked on the man by the Wall. 

“He’s got a thousand faces, all of the rotting dead.”

Jansen leaned even closer.

“And he pisses butterflies.” He finished. 

A pause. 

“You _utter bastard_.” Hasek yelped, finally releasing his death grip on his gun to smack Jansen across the stomach as the other man doubled over laughing. 

“Good God man, your _face!”_

“Yeah, yeah, taking the piss out of the new guy.” Hasek grumbled. 

Grinning, Jansen continued, “Well, the red eyes bit is accu-”

 

_“West!”_

 

Jansen flinched violently, the raw grief in the scream grating against his skin and sinking into his bones. Hasek swore and nearly dropped his gun, yanking it up again and aiming-

_“Don’t.”_ Jansen snarled. Hasek froze, finger on the trigger. “I wasn’t fucking joking when I said bullets didn’t work. He _laughed_. I do not want to piss off something that laughs at high caliber bullets.” 

He lowered the gun, hands shaking. Jansen didn’t feel much better; the old grief of his mother’s passing felt abruptly fresh.

The cry from the man at the wall came again, the same raw, aching grief.

_“West!” ___

The pain was quieter this time, but no less brutal.

Hasek backed away from the window, averting his eyes. Jansen stayed, watching. Not that there was much to see, just a man in a heavy coat with gloved hands braced against concrete. Jansen flexed his hands in a vague attempt to warm them.

“Why doesn’t he just go through?” Hasek whispered, “If he can get past everything else, why not the Wall?”

“I don’t know.” 

They waited for the scream to sound again, but there was nothing. Jansen settled back in his chair, and Hasek stared resolutely out the other window. When he looked again the man was gone. The snow was unmarred.

Neither of them heard, from the other side of the Wall, the faintest reply-

_“East!” ___

**Author's Note:**

> "Grenzmauer 75" (1975–1989) was the fourth generation of the Berlin Wall. It was constructed from 45,000 separate sections of reinforced concrete, each 3.6 metres (12 ft) high and 1.2 metres (3.9 ft) wide. The top of the wall was lined with a smooth pipe, intended to make it more difficult to scale. It was reinforced by mesh fencing, signal fencing, anti-vehicle trenches, barbed wire, dogs on long lines, "beds of nails" under balconies hanging over the "death strip", over 116 watchtowers, and 20 bunkers. This version of the Wall is the one most commonly seen in photographs, and surviving fragments of the Wall in Berlin and elsewhere around the world are generally pieces of the fourth-generation Wall. (Wikipedia).
> 
> This is a massively rewritten version of a fic posted with the same title in my old ff.net account. Upon reread i decided the original was terrible and got this as a result. Not sure this is much better but -shrugs-


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